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Media
September 30, 2005
Chavs of the Times
Who is Michael Carroll? According to the New York Times, he's a young, drunken idiot who is socially inappropriate and spends his money on gaudy clothes, tacky jewelry, and huge tattoos. In other words, according to the Times, he's a Chav.
Media
September 29, 2005
Penenberg Moves to Slate
New York University journalism professor Adam Penenberg, who first gained prominence in 1998 when he exposed serial fabricator Stephen Glass, is moving from Wired News to Slate, where he will continue writing columns about technology. Gelf first talked with Penenberg a few months ago when he was asked by Wired News to look into stories written for the site by Michelle Delio. (Gelf had questioned the authenticity of some of Delio's sources.) Now that he's leaving Wired News, we caught up with him over email to ask him about the next step.
Media
September 28, 2005
Cancer in the Press
No one knows for sure whether changes in diets have any influence over occurrence or spread of cancer. A few months ago, Gelf compiled an almost comical list of BBC articles about foods that have been thought to either cause or cure the disease. (In a few cases, the same vegetables were, at different times, placed in both categories.) Yesterday, the New York Times was among the first major media outlets to acknowledge the confusion. If anything, though, the rest of the media's willingness to dismiss nuance and prior studies in favor of fawning over the newest cancer-fighting wonderfood has grown.
Media
September 26, 2005
Anecdotal Journalism
David's solid reporting unearthed the flawed survey behind the New York Times's front-page announcement last week that many women at top US colleges are planning to eschew high-powered careers in favor of motherhood. As David reported, the article based its conclusions in part on an email survey with some questions phrased to elicit responses fitting with the article's premise. Gelf and many other commentators criticized the story for its flawed methods. But it's worth remembering that most trend stories are far flimsier, pinned on a suspect sponsored study or two plus two or three anecdotes and quotes shoehorned into a faulty premise. The Times's story is far from the worst of the bunch, but its high-profile placement offers us a unique opportunity to propose the following: Rid our news pages of tendentious trend stories.
Media
September 26, 2005
Conspiracy Theorist
Dolphins armed with toxic darts—escapees from covert military training ponds near Lake Pontchartrain —are roaming the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and they might be looking to harm swimmers they mistake for terrorists. An article in the British newspaper the Observer attributes this information to Leo Sheridan, "a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry." But a review of other articles based on Sheridan's claims—many of them in the Observer—show that Sheridan has a history of promoting unlikely conspiracy theories.
Media
September 23, 2005
Cliché Watch Special Edition: We Have A Problem
Yesterday, over at Poynter Online, Al Tompkins had a premonition. "So far, I have not seen anybody stoop to the "Houston, we have a problem" headline," he wrote. "Somebody will." At first, only satire sites, like The Spoof used the joke-y headline. Then Big Media jumped on board.
Media
September 22, 2005
Be Afraid. Very Afraid.
With Hurricane Rita on the way Thursday, the Associated Press eschewed its normally staid style of just-the-facts wire-service reporting for a very scary dispatch: "Gaining strength with frightening speed [eds: should that be "Gaining speed with frightening strength"? Or with "frightening acceleration"?], Hurricane Rita swirled toward the Gulf Coast a Category 5, 175-mph monster… Rita sideswiped the Florida Keys and began drawing energy with terrifying efficiency from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. … with its breathtaking size—tropical storm-force winds extending 370 miles across—practically the entire western end of the U.S. Gulf Coast was in peril, and even a slight rightward turn could prove devastating to the fractured levees protecting New Orleans."
Media
September 21, 2005
Surveying Ivy League Motherhood
Note: This article has been updated. See the end of the post for details. One likely reason that Louise Story came to the conclusion in her front page New York Times article that most Ivy League women would rather be stay-at-home moms than part of the workforce: A skewed sample. She arrives at a conclusion about "women at the nation's most elite colleges" based on spot interviews with students from a few Ivy League schools and then a survey with students at one school: her own. Last year, Story sent out a 37-question survey to a group of freshman and senior women at Yale University, her (and my) alma mater. While it is indeed possible that 60% of those who replied said "they planned to cut back on work or stop working entirely" when they had kids, as Story writes, it's doubtful that those who replied are representative of all Ivy League women.
Politics
September 20, 2005
Resign, Just in Time
Until Friday, David Safavian was head of procurement at the Office of Management and Budget. On Monday, he was indicted, and arrested. So it's interesting to compare the Washington Post and New York Times headlines on him:
Ex-White House Aid Charged in Corruption Case (NYTimes)
Bush Official Arrested in Corruption Probe
Now, I suppose the "ex-" in the Times's headline is technically true; and, sadly, it's easier to forgive a misleading headline than misleading body text.
Politics
September 19, 2005
He Said, He Said
The New York press is baffled by the abysmal turnout in last week's mayoral primary—just 17% of registered Democrats chose between the winner Fernando Ferrer and a few also-rans. Why so little public interest in the outcome? The press can place some of the blame on its own dreary horse-race fixation, which unfortunately is the dominant theme of US political coverage.
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